Disputed facts, figures
M. A. Sullivan, who responded in the August/03 issue (“Go
Figure” e-letter sidebar) to my letter regarding
Robert Pape’s work on suicide bombers (“More
on suicide terrorism,” June/03), ought to get his
facts and figures straight. Sullivan claims that Barak
offered Arafat 80 percent of 22 percent of 100 percent
of the land that originally belonged to the Palestinians.
Sorry. The land never belonged to the Palestinians.

In fact, in 1922 Great Britain unilaterally severed what
is now Jordan from the original Mandate Palestine that
was to become the “Jewish national home.”
In 1947 the UN further partitioned the land west of the
Jordan River into a Jewish and an Arab state (before the
term Palestinian was applied to the Arabs who lived there).
The Arabs, joined by neighboring Arab states, waged war
against the new State of Israel and lost all the land
within the so-called Green Line. The so-called West Bank
and Gaza were controlled by Jordan and Egypt respectively,
but they never created an independent Arab state in those
areas. The Jordanian annexation of the West Bank was never
recognized by the nations of the world, except for Great
Britain and Pakistan. It never belonged to the local Arabs.

In 1967 Israel defeated its Arab neighbors, who again
tried to destroy Israel, and occupied the West Bank and
Gaza (the biblical Judea, Samaria, and Gaza). According
to international law, the land reverted to its mandate
status. Again, it never belonged to the local Arabs, now
called Palestinians.

Unfortunately, many otherwise educated and intelligent
people have little patience for, or knowledge of, history.

Milton H.Polin, AM’53
Jerusalem, Israel

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